The number of personal computing devices is growing at a rate never seen before. It is estimated that in the United States, there are nearly 6 Internet-connected devices per household. These include such devices as personal computing devices, i.e., desktop or laptop personal computers, as well as more portable devices such as tablet computers and smartphones. A recent survey found that, among Internet-connected households, over 90% have 1 or more personal computers, almost 60% have one or more smartphones, and over 50% have one or more tablets.
The sheer number and diversity of personal computing devices creates myriad challenges for individuals to manage and coordinate their operability and security settings. These challenges exist even for knowledgeable users. Different devices have different hardware platforms, different operating systems, and different versions of applications. The capabilities of the user's devices for performing certain tasks is can vary from unit to unit. Also, the available features on each device can be different due to there being different software applications across the user's devices. This presents a need to separately configure applications on each device.
In the case of a security application, such as an antivirus suite of programs, for example, certain operations require more computing resources than others. Heuristic analysis of unknown programs, for instance, involves emulating program instructions of each unknown program in an isolated virtual computing environment, and analyzing the behavior of those instructions, prior to permitting execution of that unknown program. This process takes time and may not be feasible on certain types of computing platforms, e.g., smartphones, tablets, etc., that lack the processing power or memory to perform such operations. The configuration of security settings that relate to opening unknown files would therefore be different for a user's smartphone than for the same user's desktop PC, for example.
Organizations operating enterprise private networks, such as businesses, governmental organizations, etc., have policies that can be applied uniformly across all devices of a particular class, and that permit certain applications, especially security applications, to be configured in a particular way. Typically, such organizations have certain common platforms deployed with particular licensed software, which enable uniform application of security policies.
However, this level of coordination is almost always lacking for individuals or families that own multiple different devices. The challenge of separately configuring different devices is further compounded when other, often less-knowledgeable, family members, such as children, have possession of certain devices.
There is a need for an effective and efficient solution for configuring software on diverse devices.